


bloody and raw (but i swear it is sweet)

by darksideofmyroom



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotional Constipation, Gen, Hozier, Introspection, M/M, Pining, Probably ooc, Romance, do i even actually ship them? idk, i have no idea what this is, i just love alfie man he’s the best, like none at all, unless I continue this lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26202634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darksideofmyroom/pseuds/darksideofmyroom
Summary: he takes longing and desire into his hands, molds them with his fingers for entire afternoons, the clay of feelings, until they finally lose their edge and gain their shape.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	bloody and raw (but i swear it is sweet)

The window is open.

A wedge of moonlight slips into the room. It fills it up quietly, along with the clear sound of waves crashing on the not so distant shore.

It takes a bit of breeze and the little noises that the silence brings for it to finally contain some resemblance of life, as the two men inside it might as well be shadows, though particularly heavy and extremely tainted.

Alfie sits on the sofa, a book laid open on his lap.

It’s too dark now to read and he should probably turn on a light. 

He won’t.

The time has come for something else, and occasionally, when he’s bored, Alfie can be a patient man.

Tommy stands with his back against the wall, facing Alfie.

He’s at home in his discomfort, his eyes sharp and focused though the lines on his thin face are somewhat softened by what could either be easiness or relief.

Alfie is not one to let the stillness linger and he’s quite a stranger to the choice of not speaking, but he has to admit there’s a certain indescribable power to moments like this.

It’s not easy, but he tries not to step on the invisible glass bridge building between them, linking him to Tommy through something that transcends words, or any intentions. Something way more simple and twice as dangerous.

He ends up failing to maintain that secret connection most of the time.

He’s tired today. His bones ache and his mind keeps wandering into those muddy corners he doesn’t normally allow it to visit.

He scratches his beard, then pulls his hand away.

It’s hard to ignore the itching, the torturing itching of his skin and the stupid, tragically hopeful itching for something to shift and change.

Tommy’s hands shake. Alfie times it in his head.

_ One. Two. Three-  _ there it goes.

A flash of light gives life to yet another cigarette.

Alfie might count the movements, but he doesn’t bother keeping track of the smokes.

“It’s late” says Tommy, through his grey breath.

“Is it now?” Alfie makes a show of looking around and just now realizing that the sun has gone down, leaving them into a gradual night.

“Yes” 

The syllable is pronounced in that way of Tommy’s that makes it sound like a sigh melted in a song. It’s a specific kind of cadence, it follows a predetermined rhythm, and as he observes this, Alfie wonders if anyone else pays this much attention to simple words of affirmation, or if he’s, rather more simply, fucked up in the head.

“Right” he squints his eyes. He’s not, he’s really not, disappointed.

Alfie’s not one to cling to company, and he certainly doesn’t need Tommy’s presence to fill any empty spaces.

But then again, Alfie’s a bit of a madman, isn’t he?

He’s not sane enough to know what he wants, tries not to care about it. Hell if he’s tired though, the itching won’t let him rest and Tommy-

“Well you better get going then. Chariot’s waiting and all that” he waves his hand around “Might turn into a fuckin’ pumpkin if you don’t hurry up.”

Tommy stares. 

It makes Alfie fucking uneasy, right, the way his eyes pore into a poor man’s soul so unforgivingly and take it apart with such coldness.

Yet, to meet his glance is an instinct he can’t quite control. Not that he ever tried to do such thing.

Tommy blinks. Alfie’s esophagus shrinks for a second and clogs up. 

Is this what fear used to feel like? He keeps getting his emotions mixed up.

“What’s the rush, eh?”

Tommy pushes himself off the wall, he starts walking towards Alfie and stops halfway, next to the couch.

He crouches down to pick the whiskey bottle off the table between them and pours himself a glass.

Finally, he sits down. The glass swings in his hand, while held between the other’s fingers dances his cigarette.

He brings it to his lips, takes a drag.

Alfie holds his breath. It’s stupid, but he does.

“Aren’t you overstaying your welcome, mate?”

“I don’t know, Alfie, you tell me.” 

A beat of silence filled with something else. 

“Was I ever welcome?”

  
  
  
  


The sharp smell of shit fills his nostrils all of a sudden, and though it is not unfamiliar nor the worst Alfie’s known, it still isn’t fucking pleasant, is it now?

“There we go. This is sure one way to tell we’re near that bumhole you lot call Birmingham. Eh, Tommy? Feel like home yet?”

Tommy doesn’t pay him any mind as he gives him his back to take a piss.

Once he’s finished he comes to stand next to Alfie, their shoulders almost brushing against each other.

There’s a certain delicacy to it, that holds in itself all the destructive power of hurricanes and emotion. It’s a violent softness that vibrates intrinsically with the art of holding back.

A ruthless caress, it is.

See, touch is close and touch is easy.

Shoulder to shoulder, hands on chest, lips against lips. It all follows, it all flows with the distant lull of being alive and wanting.

It’s no different from pulling a trigger. All it takes is a finger, a body and the unwavering choice of moving, making, and destroying.

Alfie waits, and turns in his patience.

Is this sacrifice? Is this control?

He keeps his eyes fixed right in front of him, dismissing the fact that it’s painful, and a bit against nature, cause then again, so is he.

Tommy thinks.

He’s always so goddamn loud with his thoughts, and he isn’t even aware of it.

He believes his silence equals quiet and he’s so wrong, Alfie wants to tell him:  _ ‘you make too much fucking noise.’ _

It doesn’t take long for the lighter to meet the cigarette, deadly dancer between Tommy’s fingers.

It should get boring. It sure is repetitive, and insistent, and particularly unnerving at times.

But it fills the air, covers the space, and while it does make things rotten, it also brings them to the present, makes them dirty enough for them to be real.

It also gives an excuse for Alfie’s eyes to linger on Tommy’s mouth.

_ Fuck. _

Fuck Alfie and the way his thoughts move like a caravan that would rather forget where it’s headed.

Fuck Tommy and his fingers, his lips and his bloody smoking.

There’s clouds in the sky and no sun to be seen.

The smell of shit stains the already quite mediocre scenery, and forgive Alfie for seeking more pleasant sights, a prettier picture.

He’s in no way a man of taste, but his taste is well developed and refined all the same. There’s nothing wrong in that, no reason he should deprive himself of earthly delights.

When he turns his head to look at Tommy, Tommy turns his head to look at him.

It’s not about delicacy anymore as it is about calm. An insipid fulfillment that doesn’t brim from merrily raised cups, but sits on a sofa besides a fireplace, and though outside a storm is raging, all is well as it is, and to need anything else is foreign.

Tommy says: “I was a child once. Here.”

There’s no wind blowing and that child died choking in his own blood.

Alfie wants to tell him, not to let him know, but he needs to say something quick and clever to ridicule whatever this is, for it’s too big to be taken seriously.

Yet, once again, it is Tommy to speak. Maybe just to break another rule.

“And so were you” 

A pause.

They’re still looking at each other and Alfie skips around Tommy’s forehead, slips down his cheeks, takes a dip in his eyes.

“Do you remember, Alfie?”

Some questions have an easy answer.

“I wish I didn’t.”

  
  
  
  


Somewhere between heavy silences and light-footed invasions, it all eventually comes crashing down.

It’s the quiet kind of explosion, so sudden it leaves no time for fear, no space for reaction.

It reminds Alfie of the empty seconds in the war, those in which he would forget his own name and then suddenly snap back to all the chaos, back to his body.

That is where they find themselves.

They sit at the edge of the bathtub in Alfie’s bathroom. The warm yellow flickering light envelops them softly, and makes everything feel ancient and weary. Same people, same gestures, through all of time.

Alfie lovingly wipes the blood he himself drew from Tommy’s face, tends to the wounds he himself inflicted.

It’s the pattern they fell into as business partners, as whatever other thing they might be, and it works just right, so they take turns, back and forth, until it’s comfortable, until it’s easy.

They’re sharing the same air, the same thoughts ricochet on their foreheads, until they finally come to rest against each other.

It feels like the gentlest of breezes in the middle of the desert. And it’s so tender Alfie struggles to comprehend it fully, his heart betrays him and races as it searches for an answer, while Alfie’s fingertips dance carefully over bruises, as if their touch alone could heal them.

Tommy closes his eyes and shrinks.

There’s something about the way he trusts Alfie so naturally, even instinctively, despite the blood and the sour taste betrayal always leaves behind; that makes Alfie want to drop to his knees in reverence.

It goes beyond what words can express and it’s even too complex for glances.

If Alfie were a blasphemous man, he’d say that the way Tommy caves in so sweetly and puts himself in his hands despite knowing better, is worthy of worship.

As for now he kisses the scar on Tommy’s cheek, then fits his hand on the back of his head.

When their eyes meet, Alfie says: 

“You need to stop sticking your head in everybody’s matters. Fucking annoying, it is. One of these days someone’s patience is gonna run out, right, and it might as well turn out to be mine. I’d have to kill you then, mate. Wouldn’t hesitate, either. A right pain in the ass, you are, you fucking Shelbys.”

Tommy grins like he’s proud of himself.

“You’re lying, Alfie” he enunciates slowly, taking his time.

“You’re trying to say you’re not a major pain in the ass? Because let me just deliver you some fucking news-”

“That’s not what I’m talking about” with this, Tommy takes Alfie’s face between his hands and pulls him close to the point that Alfie almost goes cross-eyed trying to put him into focus.

“You’ll never kill me” his smile broadens and he’s absolutely sure of his words, he glows with victory and doesn’t hesitate to flaunt it.

With this, he means to say:  _ ‘give up, I’ve already won.’ _

He’s right, of course, and he knows it. Even when Alfie replies with: “Yeah, yeah, let’s see where such confidence gets you, uh?” he knows it. 

It’s true.

They’re both fucking sadists, in the end.

They come back to get hurt, they come back cause it’s intoxicating, the affection that comes with breaking and mending.

And the worst part is, there is a word that encapsulates it all, but if either one of them dares say it aloud, they’ll both burst into flames and burn.

  
  
  
  


Alfie is not a slave to his humanity.

He doesn’t fear time, doesn’t mind conscience.

This is what he gets and he might as well take it.

The certainty of death and the uncertainty of what comes after it doesn’t hang like spiderwebs in the corners of his mind. He keeps it clean, in that sense, for there’s no practical use in existential dread.

He’s a gangster, after all, and fucking Jewish, too.

There’s no morality nor hope in Alfie’s way of life. It all will end, and the world won’t get better, so he might as well have a good time, earn his share.

He didn’t ask for anything to be everlasting, nor unchanging. What counts is movement, and the rush he gets along the way, between jewels and bloody knuckles.

He likes his life like that, and there’s no point in wasting thoughts on things unreachable.

Only fools want what they can’t have.

And though Alfie is the farthest thing from a young, wide-eyed fool who still hasn’t seen the world up-close; he trips and falls just like one of them all the same.

So it comes along with the storm. The waves carry it over with the foam, and just like in ancient tales of birth and beauty, it spreads and blooms.

Now Alfie waits and watches on the shore.

He finds that in his loneliness he’s never once alone.

His own head has become a home to Tommy Shelby’s piercing glares and heavy silences, his unwavering arrogance and quiet strength, his sharp mind and the way he always seems to find a way to send Alfie reeling.

The realisation, with all its weight, sinks like an anchor down Alfie’s throat, painfully slow, until it reaches his gut.

It’s a violent epiphany to find himself wishing to slow, stop, and then again rush time.

“You’re getting old” Tommy tells him, a poor excuse for a farewell, and even a weaker dismissal. He looks down at him from where he’s sitting, up on his horse, and then directs the animal to turn and start his pace.

And it’s there, for the first time, that Alfie does fear death, and what comes after it.

It’s all about missing. It’s about how many times he can watch Tommy leave, and the way they’re too many and never enough.

The waiting is wasted when the time runs out, and he’s not holding anything between his hands.

He  _ is  _ getting old. And along with age comes the terrifying concept of weakness, and humanity.

Suddenly, he’s face to face with it all.

Time, life, himself, and of all things, fucking love.

The blow’s not hard enough to send him to the ground, though it is sharp as it needs to be to wake him the hell up.

So he takes longing and desire into his hands, molds them with his fingers for entire afternoons, the clay of feelings, until they finally lose their edge and gain their shape.

Then, he turns matter into action, and tears down the walls of the wavering limbo he built for himself. 

All that’s left now is…

And, as it must, it happens on the beach.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I’m gonna be honest, writing this was like a fever dream and I’m pretty sure half of this isn’t coherent at all and the other half is just my subconscious doing cartwheels, so sorry, but thank you so much for reading through the end!  
> I apologize for any grammar mistakes, English isn’t my first language so please feel free to point them out.  
> At this point I normally beg for comments, and while they’re always super duper nice and make my day, this once they’re actually extremely needed because I swear I have no clue what this is and I need someone else who doesn’t live in my head to either explain to me what I was trying to say or tell me straight “hey wtf is this, it makes no sense”  
> anyway, I love you all and I hope you’re doing great!


End file.
